English Dance and Song Autumn 2017
EDS, the magazine of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, is the world’s oldest magazine for folk music and dance. First published in 1936, EDS is essential reading for anyone with a passion for folk arts. The following sample article is copyright. You are welcome to share it in the format supplied and accompanied by this title page, but you may not reproduce it, in full or in part, by any other means.
Delve digitally into the Carpenter Collection
Elaine Bradtke, of the James Madison Carpenter Collection Project team, and Laura Smyth, Library and Archives Director of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML), discuss the latest exciting addition to the VWML’s digital archive.
The VWML and the team behind the James Madison Carpenter Collection Project have worked collaboratively on a major venture to bring the Carpenter collection to the VWML’s online digital archive.
This digital archive was created through the groundbreaking Heritage Lottery-funded project, The Full English, which saw the digitisation of 21 seminal folk collections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Now – thanks to funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council – the James Madison Carpenter Collection, based at the Library of Congress in America, has been integrated into the VWML’s digital archive and is freely accessible to all from September.
This long-awaited event means that researchers, performers, genealogists and other interested parties can finally search the collection and view or listen to the digital versions of the originals online.
The James Madison Carpenter Collection, documented during the period 1927-1955, contains traditional song and drama, plus items of traditional instrumental music, dance, custom, narrative and children’s folklore, from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the USA. The bulk of Carpenter’s material was collected in Britain between 1929 and 1935, which was after early collectors such as Sharp and Greig but before the BBC and other collectors returned to the field after the Second World War.
What makes this collection of particular interest is the large number of sound recordings, comprising 179 Dictaphone cylinders and 220 12-inch acetate discs, alongside approximately 15,000 pages of manuscript and typescript, 40 drawings and 560 photographs.
Some of the more unique items include dreg songs, which were sung by oyster dredgers of the Firth of Forth; recordings of morris fiddle players such as Sam Bennett, John Robbins and William Wells; rare and unique tunes for Child ballads, and the drawings of characters from folk plays by Gloucestershire folk artist, George Baker. The photographs range from Scottish castles to mummers and village children dancing around a maypole.
The foundations were laid several decades ago after the Library of Congress purchased the collection in 1972. Staff there re-housed and preserved the collection and eventually digitised it for improved access. But it was never an easy collection to use due to its size and complexity. So, in 2001, folk song researcher Julia Bishop assembled a team of researchers – whose interests reflected the materials in the collection – including David Atkinson, Elaine Bradtke, Eddie Cass, Thomas McKean and Robert Young Walser. Working closely with staff at the Library of Congress, they compiled a detailed listing of the contents of the collection which was published by HRI Online at the University of Sheffield.
In 2014, the Library of Congress entered into an agreement with EFDSS, allowing us to make the Carpenter collection available online. This provided an exciting opportunity: not only could the catalogue and the digital materials be brought together at last, but the whole collection could be incorporated into the VWML’s digital archive alongside our other online collections. This collection fills some crucial gaps – Carpenter collected in the early 1930s and he made sound recordings when not many other collectors were doing so. This new addition to our digital archive will also make it possible to compare songs and tunes gathered from the same contributor over a range of years, since Carpenter visited some of the same people and places as earlier collectors.
The collection data incorporates new features not currently found on the VWML site, such as an authority index of performers, making it easier to find the full repertoire from a single individual. This is incredibly useful when looking at singers from, for example, Stonehaven in Scotland, where a number of contributors all bore the name of James Masson.
Supporting materials include short films about Carpenter, the collection and the people who contributed to it, plus an interview recorded by Alan Jabbour, the then-director of the American Folklife Center, who tracked down Carpenter in Booneville, Mississippi, in 1972.
The project will continue to develop over the next few months, with festival workshops, archive study days, adult and youth performances and schools learning programmes in England and Scotland. This will bring the collection to new audiences and encourage them to explore the riches of the VWML digital archive for themselves. Descendants of Carpenter’s 800-odd contributors will also play a key role in telling the story of these performers through their words, photographs and memories.
The project will culminate with a celebration event at Cecil Sharp House on 27 March 2018.
To access the James Madison Carpenter Collection, visit www.vwml.org
Find out more about The James Madison Carpenter Collection Project at www.abdn.ac.uk/ elphinstone/carpenter
The Carpenter Folk Online project blog is at carpfolkonline.blog
The original online catalogue is hosted by the University of Sheffield HRI Online site: www.hrionline.ac.uk/carpenter/ index.html
A hard copy of the catalogue and index – in the form of a ‘critical edition’ prepared by the Carpenter project team – will be published by the University Press of Mississippi later in the year to complement the online digitised collection.
